The reason why I said 29 minutes was that the final minute of this match might possibly be one of the stupidest endings to a match I think I’ve ever seen.

For once, AEW has nailed the idea of time cues in a time limit draw to build suspense and excitement. Five minutes left, four minutes left, and so on. They finally got the hang of it, and the final minute of this match should have been nonstop moment after moment of both teams trying desperately to win the tournament and the title shot. Instead, FTR decided to pull a table from under the ring and carefully set it up on the guardrail. Even the commentary team where like “Guys, you do know that you only have a minute of the match left, don’t you?”

Don’t worry, though, it could be for a post-match angle as Brody King is here to throw Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler back in the ring! Wait, no, he’s not, he’s throwing FTR around the ringside area and trying to do splashes into the guardrail, something that Bryan Danielson tried to justify on commentary by saying he probably didn’t hear the time cues. That’s it, Bryan, it’s his poor hearing that is the problem. Finally, though, Bandido is here to finish the match off, except no, he isn’t, he’s going to try and spear Cash through the table on the outside, which Cash avoids, who then proceeds to torpedo himself through the table, only barely grazing Brody as the time expires. What on earth was that?

Seriously, all four guys couldn’t have looked more stupid even if they tried. They had an arena full of people telling them they had 60 seconds of the match left, and they decided to start doing spots on the floor? Hello? Have they missed their own cues or something? To make it even funnier, Bandido then hits his 21-plex, thinks the match is still going nearly a full minute after the bell rang, and he had the audacity to look at referee Paul Turner and be like, “Amigo, why aren’t you counting?” Like, are these four guys jetlagged or something, because this was a mess.

God bless Arkady Aura for trying to inject some life back into the fans by saying that both FTR and Brodido would be going to Forbidden Door and challenging The Hurt Syndicate for the AEW Tag Team Championships, but even that puts a stain on the tournament itself as a clear winner would have made the title match feel so much more important. Plus, this is literally the same thing that happened with FTR and The Acclaimed last year, a 30-minute draw that led to both teams challenging for the titles in the UK. It’s not only a stupid ending, but it’s lazy booking as well.

Overall, a fantastic match ended with a prime example of how to suck the air out of the room. Let’s hope it was worth it come this Sunday.

Written by Sam Palmer